Alice, Hitchhiker's, and Vonnegut are all much more entertaining than the bible. For entertainment value, I would compare the bible with the National Electrical Code, although the NEC makes much more sense.

Nothing, because then Christians would have nothing to base their faith or beliefs on and there would be a whole lot less of them if any at all. It was also what was relied on to support slavery, the inquisition, the crusades, etc etc - all of it most likely not happening. Finally, it was what legitimized the Catholic church which took our civilization into the dark ages, so by replacing the Bible with nothing, the church would have never gained traction, and most likely we would be a much more socially and technologically advanced society today.

Since we can't really run the experiment of 'no bible influencing history', we are stuck with this culture, or good or ill. I was of the impression that the 'dark ages' aso included the plague, which killed pprox 1/3 of the human population in Europe. That would sure kick the wind out of anyone's sails/sales!

It's true the bubonic plague did occur during the dark ages, but it's only real cure was antibiotics which really didn't become effective until the early to mid-20th century and many of the deaths could have been prevented by the understanding of how the disease spread, but germ theory wasn't really created or proven until the 19th century. Given that the dark ages were from the 5th to the 15th centuries and that the bubonic plague stuck in the 6th and [hardest in the] 14th centuries the question is whether without the existence of the bible would have medical science advanced more than 600 years faster than (and in the way) it did in time to save the many Europeans that were killed? Secondly we must ask, unlike the genocides, inquisition, the crusades, and slavery, was the naturally occurring plague a "bad" thing that should have been prevented from occuring?

Ironically, Chris, during Europe's Dark Ages, it was the followers of Islam that kept knowledge alive and Christian/Muslim conflict that reintroduced it to Europe.

The biggest problem with Christian Europe of this era, was that it replaced thinking, with believing, as evidenced by the classic example that Galileo spent the last years of his life under house arrest for announcing that the sun did not revolve around the Earth, for the simple reason that the theory conflicted with that - as we all know - inerrant book, the Bible.